How much is that Doggie in the window,
The one with the fine marbling through its rump?
OK, so it's time to address the elephant in the room when it comes to Korean cuisine. And the elephant I'm referring to is furry, has a waggly tail and pisses on lamposts. As regular readers of this blog know, I'm not afraid to approach some of the more unsavoury subjects related to food so, yes, I'm going there: the eating of dogs. This is something of a custom in Korea, at least according to good old Wikipedia, though it's now banned to slaughter dogs for food, yet it's still legal to eat them. Where are they going to get them from? I mean, it's not like they've got a family pack of St Bernard mince or a four-pack of Labrador burgers in Aldi, or whatever the equivalent is in downtown Seoul. I've covered cultural differences in food before, and we can't be at all judgemental about what people consume in other cultures. While we in the west think eating dogs is barbaric, Koreans probably regard putting a piece of mouldy, rotten milk in your mouth utterly disgusting. These things are very much relative, and, to coin a phrase, in the belly of the devourer. Having said that, given the current situation the human world finds itself in at the time of writing, the bats were probably a bad thing to eat.
I suppose it's not just the revulsion at the act of eating the meat of dogs, though. It's the fact that we're a nation of dog lovers and have trouble seeing them even as animals, much less food. We love our pooches. They're part of the family. True, a part of our family that licks its own arsehole and requires you to follow it around in order to pick up any crap that emanates from that same arsehole, but a part of the family none the less. Total dog lovers. Just don't mention dog fighting, puppy farms or severe in-breeding in pure-bred dogs giving them a shallower gene pool that the British Royal Family and leading to massive health problems, pain and suffering. Anyway, consumption of dog meat in Korea is apparently on the wain, whereas the UK will soon be feasting on a diet of rat tikka masala, mouse fricassee and cow pat soup when the food shortages hit following Brexit, or the North Korean Weight Loss Plan, as it could be called.
I'm sure all you readers will appreciate that the recipe, as written, has no canine content whatsoever. On the other hand, it's probably the meatiest dish you can make. Beef, mushrooms, soya bean paste. It's like the world festival of umami and is incredibly filling and satisfying. It's just like Mum used to make, if Mum was born in Pyongyang and was part of the ruling elite, as most North Koreans probably couldn't buy beef. Indeed, if news reports are to be believed, they can't buy much of anything since there are massive food shortages, as I alluded to above.
Glutamic acid
The source of umami
So, it's another long, slow cooked stew, suitable for the slow cooker. Doenjang is a fermented soya bean paste, like gochujang, but without the chilli (see my recipe for pork gochujang, the Yin to this recipe's Yang). I suppose its closest relative you can buy fairly easily on the UK high street or supermarket is probably Chinese yellow bean sauce, though they do taste distinctly different.
TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes, plus soaking for the shitake mushrooms
Cooking: Six hours plus in the slow cooker. Three hours or more on the hob
INGREDIENTS
Flavourings
Clockwise from top left: doenjang paste, chilli, garlic, ginger
2tbsp vegetable oil (not olive)
400g cubed stewing beef
1 leek, trimmed, tailed, and cut into 1cm slices
1 thumbsized chunk of ginger, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
250g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm chunks
4 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in a mug of water for at least 20 minutes then sliced, water reserved
225g tin sliced bamboo shoots, drained
150g fresh mushrooms, sliced
100g baby sweetcorn, cut into 2cm chunk
1 red chilli, finely chopped
2 tbsp doenjang paste
2 tbsp mirin
Vegetables ready to go
RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy pan, add the meat, and fry it until it has some colour, around 10 minutes.
Remove the beef with a slotted spoon then add the leek.
Fry for 5 minutes to soften, then add the ginger and garlic and fry for another 5.
Add the potatoes, mushrooms (both types) and bamboo shoots and baby corn and contiue to stir for a few minutes more.
Add the water from soaking the shitake mushrooms and mirin.
Return the meat to the pan, along with the chilli and doenjang paste.
Stir well and put in the slow cooker on medium for 6 hours or more, or else cover and leave on a low heat on the hob.
Check the post intermittently and add the odd splash of water if it looks to be getting too thick or dry
Makes more than enough for two people, served with boiled, steamed or egg-fried rice.
NOTES
Beef is the best meat for this dish, but it may work with pork or lamb. You could even get away with chicken, but might have to use a little less doenjang. In fact, add more potato, leave out the beef and you would have a very hearty vegetarian version and it could be the meatiest vegan dish you could imagine.
This works well with plenty of vegetables. Potato really absorbs the flavour of the sauce fantastically, so you need to keep this in. Otherwise, mess about with the vegies to your heart's content. Water chestnuts would work well, as would courgette (add towards the end of cooking or it will disintegrate in the slow cooker), cauliflower should stand up to the flavour or green pepper would also work
Dried shitake mushrooms add another dimension, over and above regular mushrooms, and the water you rehydrate them in adds further depth to the stew. You could omit them if you can't get hold of them, and maybe add a vegetable stock cube plus 200ml water.
Mirin is essentially rice wine. Replace with the same amount of dry white wine or dry sherry if you can't get hold of it.
I know the whole thing about eating dogs is often used as a racist trope directed at anyone who is a member of any Far Eastern ethnic minority in the UK. It's just a short hop from this to urban legends of cats going missing around Chinese takeaways which, as well as being offensively racist, quite frankly don't make sense. Given your average takeaway probably gets through a good couple of dozen chickens on a good night, the odd cat isn't really going to save an awful lot of money, and the risk of being caught and losing business too great. Snopes has a good discussion of this urban legend here an article that is now over 20 years old and refers to these stories from the mid twentieth century, so it's hardly new, and is just as much a load of bullshit now as it was then.
Adam and the Ants addressed eating dogs way back in the early 80s. Well, they didn't, not literally, but it was still a decent song.
It would be remiss of me not to post this track
